NYPD Arrests Street Artist for Mocking NYPD in Public

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The 29-year-old street artist Essam Attia practically led police to his door after he illegally installed fake propaganda posters for the department around the city. Although his identity was partially concealed in a video interview discussing the project, he did leak a few identifying details and even signed some of the work “ESSAM,” according to the Daily News. As a result, he “was hit with 56 counts of criminal possession of a forged instrument, grand larceny possession of stolen property and weapons possession after allegedly having an unloaded .22-caliber revolver under his bed at his Manhattan apartment when he was arrested early Wednesday.” Perhaps the arrest — and the attention paid to the relatively harmless crime — proves his overarching point about the surveillance state, but he also made iteasy.